Bison Without Number
Last spring I visited Theodore Roosevelt National Park hoping to see bison. I didn’t see any until my second day in the park when I saw a few huge, lone bulls. I also saw two small herds of cows and calves that were too far away to photograph.
Today at the library I paged through Joni Kinsey’s Plain Pictures: Images Of the America Prairie. Some of the paintings of bison herds were stunning. The immensity of the herds! I’d known that the bison herds up to the end of the 19th Century were huge, but these paintings emphasize the herd’s great sizes more than mere numbers. If you prefer numbers, know that at the start of the 19th Century, there were between 30 and 50 million bison on the Great Plains. By the end of the 19th century there were less than 1,000.
There are two things in the painting I’ve displayed; The Gathering Of the Herds painted by William Jacob Hays in 1866. One is the bison herd. The other is the low, rolling hills of the prairie. In the background, what at first might be taken for forest or brush is actually parts of the herd flowing over the hills.
The Gathering Of the Herds, William Jacob Hays, 1866
Lone Bull In Theodore Roosevelt National Park - 2022
Another Lone Bull - 2022